Klamath Basin students to travel to Chile for dialogue on dams

Chilean Actress Juanita Ringleing Vicuña and Sammy Gensaw, a Klamath native, paddle a traditional redwood dugout canoe to the final celebration with the Rios to Rivers program in Requa.
Weston Boyles — Contributed

As the prospect of removing four dams from the Klamath River draws closer, students from the Klamath River Basin are set to travel next year to river communities and indigenous tribes in Chile that are facing the potential of new dams being built on their local rivers.

The trip will come after eight Chilean students who live on Rio Baker in Patagonia toured the entire length of the Klamath Basin with 17 Klamath Basin students in July.

Yurok Tribe member and Klamath native Sammy Gensaw, 23, was one of the organizers of the exchange trip and said that the Chilean students were at first impressed at the clearness of the water at the top of the basin at Crater Lake in Oregon. But Sammy Gensaw said this impression changed when they traveled past the first dams on the Klamath River.

“Then when we got down to the main stem Klamath and they had seen the dams and the effects the dams had,” Sammy Gensaw said. “And you could tell they had never seen dams like this before.”

Sammy Gensaw’s younger brother Jon-Luke Gensaw, 19, was one of the Klamath Basin students who attended the recent trip. Jon-Luke Gensaw said the Chilean students told him how they would be able put a glass in the water of the Rio Baker and drink it without fear. When Jon-Luke Gensaw told them that doing the same on the Klamath River, let alone swimming in the water, was not always safe due to the algae outbreaks.

“They were kind of shocked,” Jon-Luke Gensaw said. “I think they were expecting it would be a bit more clean because of what they’re used to.”

Both the Chile and Klamath Basin trips are sponsored by the nonprofit exchange program Rios to Rivers. Rios to Rivers founder and Director Weston Boyles said the itinerary of the Klamath Basin trip allowed students to meet with the many stakeholders in the basin, from agricultural producers to dam owners to tribes to researchers.

“We’re giving the students the opportunity to hear both sides of the issue,” Boyles said. “We met with people on all sides of the issue and we want students to form their own opinions and really be empowered to be the future generation. This is the future generation that will have to really deal with all these issues and problems.”

Boyles said he began the exchange program in 2012 after meeting a couple in Patagonia who built kayaks and taught kayaking to youth in a remote rural town in central Patagonia on the Rio Baker River.

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For the eight Chilean students, visiting the Klamath Basin was sort of like stepping into a time machine to the future, Boyles said.

Five hydroelectric dams are proposed to be built on the Rio Baker and Pascua rivers in central Patagonia by the company HidroAysen dam, Boyles said. The project will make up 20 percent of Chile’s total energy portfolio, but it has been setback by environmental reviews, Boyles said.

In this way, the upcoming trip to Patagonia will be like stepping back in time for the Klamath Basin youth.

The Gensaw brothers are both set to travel to Chile, with Sammy attending as a leader and Jon-Luke as a student. This will be one of several international trips Sammy Gensaw has made to advocate for dam removal and opposition to dam construction, having traveled to Brazil in 2014 and Malaysia with Jon-Luke Gensaw in 2015.

While Sammy Gensaw said there was a strong sense of empowerment by the indigenous peoples on the Amazon River and in Malaysia, he found in talking with the Chilean students that they often disassociated themselves with their indigenous roots and associated that identity more with their grandparents. Both Sammy and Jon-Luke Gensaw said they hope to show the river communities that being indigenous is empowering, especially when uniting for a common goal.

“A lot of the time, the power gets taken away from the people and put in the hands of the big corporations,” Sammy Gensaw said. “The people tend to forget how much power we truly hold. By them coming together with us and being able to learn about how our resistance and struggle with these dams can help these current situations before these dams are put in.”

During the Chile trip, the eight Klamath Basin students and two leaders will begin at the Maipo River outside of Santiago where Boyles said there is an ongoing dam construction project that is facing strong opposition.

The students will then go further south to meet with the Mapuche Indians on the Bio Bio River, which was dammed in 1996 to the detriment of the tribe, Boyles said. And just like the Chilean students trip on the Klamath River, the Klamath Basin students will end the trip by floating down the Rio Baker through Patagonia.

The past three Rios to Rivers trips are all funded through donations, Boyles said, with about $75,000 needed to fund the February trip to Chile. Sammy and Jon-Luke Gensaw said they both plan to help with fundraising efforts in Humboldt and Del Norte counties in the coming months.

“This trip is really about uniting indigenous communities on a global scale,” Sammy Gensaw said. “We want to help our neighbors. There is a lot they can learn from us.”